Month: November 2007

Tomorrow morning (early) my family and I will be on a plane to Disney World. We’re spending a week there, and I’ll get to see it for the first time as I only could being married to a former travel agent who specialized in Disney trips. I’m really looking forward to it (except the part about getting up so early tomorrow). : )

I just got The Orange Box, but I haven’t played it yet. I keep reading things on the internet and hearing things people tell me that make me want to start it, but every time I actually sit down to play it, I find I feel like playing Mass Effect instead. I’m really enjoying Mass Effect.

Forgot to mention here the awesome deal I got at Toys ‘R Us last week. In the ad last week they were offering a $25 gift card for buying Super Mario Galaxy. I figured I would get it anyway but was intending to wait, until I saw that. My wife had also clipped a coupon for a $10 gift card with a $75 purchase. After looking through most of the store for something to push us over the $75 mark so we could take advantage of both offers, we went to the video games section and I mentioned that I had intended to get Zack & Wiki before too long anyway. So we picked that up and when we got to the counter the guy told us Wii games were buy 2, get one free. Sweet! So I also got Metroid Prime 3: Corruption–they were out of Fire Emblem and Super Paper Mario.

I just got back from an advance screening of the new Disney movie, Enchanted. Going into it I had seen the previews and I wasn’t expecting that much; it seemed like it would be that stupid kind of try-too-hard comedy that you find in movies like The Animal. I was pleasantly surprised; it is over-the-top, but it is quite intentional and it’s a well-executed tongue-in-cheek, poking fun at itself and the clichés of the princess-fairy-tale genre.

A bug is found in the software controlling a change machine. It’s only a slight miscalculation…

Mistakes are made on a man’s tattoos. This is probably why expensive tattoo artists have business; they’re just better than the cheap ones (I hope the tatto artist in question was a cheap one, anyway).

A man is fined for playing educational DVDs in his car. Very educational for kids…

Valentine’s pranks began in May. Who ever heard of Valentine’s pranks? Where’s the love? Very funny, though.

Teachers come up with new and innovative instruction methods. Their next field trip will be a week in the forest with the kids allowed bringing nothing but a hunting knife and a compass, to learn about the way of life of the feral mountain-man.

Santa is finally losing his preferential treatment. Just because it’s been around longer than the connotation and doesn’t mean the same thing, doesn’t mean offense should not be taken. It’s just like how songs which use the term “gay” in the original sense should be censored or re-recorded with a different word. I am joking, of course.

So I read about how Assassin’s Creed has been getting some bad reviews. I just picked up my preordered limited edition copy today, and I haven’t played much of it, but so far I think it is pretty fun and very impressive. The production values are amazing. But I’m not really posting here to talk about what I think from the first little bit of the game; I was thinking of giving my own review as a possible counterpoint to the negative ones once I finish it, but now I feel I don’t have to wait that long to say this. What I really wanted to point out is how I now completely understand what Gabe said about review scores being meaningless.

This is what sports should be like. Remember making all those jokes about full-contact chess? Well the joke’s on you1, now! What’s next, Go Wrestling? Seriously, though, pretty interesting for the fact that it encourages people to improve more than one aspect of themselves.

Well, after reading this, Call of Duty 4 has now been added to my Christmas list as well. There are so many good games coming out, it’s a little daunting and worrisome. When will I have the time to enjoy them all?

Yesterday I read this interview with Valve’s Eric Wolpaw. I had never heard of him before, but now I’m a fan. I did skip some chunks of the interview to avoid Portal spoilers (unfortunately I read some anyway but not much can be done about that now), as The Orange Box is on my Christmas list. This guy is hilarious, enough so that I added four quotes from the interview to my rotating collection for the sidebar. Definitely worth a read (especially if you’ve already played through Portal; otherwise, avoid most of the middle).